Ice Palace  (K-Tel International)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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There's another C64 game with the same title of 'Ice Palace' released in 1985 by Creative Sparks, but this game was released by K-Tel a year earlier and bears no similarities other than the name.

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The objective seems to be to guide a penguin through three arcade mini-games in an effort to win the affections of a potential mate (indicated by the other penguin with the pulsating heart over it's head).

The game is divided into three separate stages, each of which features a different style of gameplay.

Stage one involves a conveyor belt dropping blocks of ice on to the play-field. The position of the blocks is random, so the player has to avoid the falling blocks whilst using them as a set of steps to reach the other penguin. Pieces of fruit will occasionally fall from the conveyor and these can be collected for bonus points, but you mustn't stand on a block of ice for too long as it will melt, potentially leaving you in a hole that you cannot escape from. You're able to make two super-jumps by pushing up on the joystick, which can get you out of sticky situations, but they must be used sparingly.

Stage two sees our love-lorn penguin atop a tower of ice that is just below a platform where the other penguin awaits. To build up the tower, the player must pick up an ice block from either end of the platform and drop it on a truck before it reaches the central column; this is a game all about quick reactions and timing.

To complicate matters, fires appear from either side of the screen and these will melt existing blocks in the tower if they are not put out in time. These can be extinguished by dropping ice on them, but you run the risk of missing a truck by doing this.

The third and final stage requires you to build a flight of stairs out of ice in order to reach your mate. It took me a while to figure this out, but pressing 'up' on the joystick will assemble a block of ice one square ahead of your position, whilst pushing 'down' will remove it.

Fires descend from the roof of the cavern and will melt all blocks of ice it touches, hampering your efforts. The fires can be extinguished by building an ice block on top of the space that the fire currently occupies, but you have to be quick. Just to make matters worse, a levitating snowman located to the left of the screen fires snowballs in your general direction. You can choose to avoid these either by getting out of the way, or by constructing blocks of ice behind you to act as a shield.

The game features eight increasing levels of difficulty, which basically makes everything faster. In particular, the speed makes the second stage the toughest since the fires and trucks move so quickly that it becomes almost impossible to time the dropping of the ice blocks correctly. Once you reach the eighth level, the game simply loops and there doesn't appear to be an ending.

The game features some nice, chunky sprites and every thing looks suitably chilly. The quality is on a part with what I would expect from a game released in 1984.

There are some basic sound effects, as well as a single piece background music that sounds as though it was meant to be a piece of classical music that the coders couldn't quite get right and decided to add in a few random notes of their own to finish it off.

I wasn't expecting much from this game, but it's actually not that bad. The game mechanics for each stage are simple to understand and easy enough to execute. Although this isn't a game that's going to offer much longevity, it's simple and jolly fun while it lasts.

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Description from the packaging :

The Ice Palace Automated Ice Block Factory is seething with romance and skullduggery!  
Winchill the Snowman's been frozen out as Chief Coldness Coordinator in favor of the beautiful Penelope Penguin. And Fred's Fire Demons are hot under their collars because Pelnor Penguin's taken over as Director of Detective Ice Block Melting. (Pelnor melts them with his hot feet). So Winchill and the fire Demons have plotted their revenge! Today , at noon, lovesick Pelnor will attempt to take Penelope to lunch. He will impress her by building a romantic stairway Iceblocks to the ledge where she eagerly awaits. But the Iceblock conveyor belt's gone bazonkers! Winchill's firing snowballs at Pelnor while Fire Demons melt his "stairway to Heaven"! 
Use your joystick to help Pelnor dodge the villains and reach Penelope through three riotess screens in the greatest love story since the BIG CHILL! 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsROgK4Lqwk
